Ultimately, "this points to a broader problem with how dependent we all are on a single, amazingly useful organization to try and cover the bulk of the work for web archiving,” @tjowens told us.
Nieman Journalism Lab
We are the Nieman Journalism Lab, part of the Nieman Foundation at Harvard. We're trying to figure out the future of news.
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Wayback Machine director Mark Graham told Nieman Lab there was “a breakdown in some specific archiving projects in May that caused less archives to be created for some sites."
He said article pages aren't affected. He also said some of the missing snapshots will become available in time.
It's not just news sites. Snapshots of government homepages are also affected.
Nieman Lab analyzed the homepage URLs of 100 news sites (including the top 50 English language sites, top international news sites, and local news sites) and found an 87% decline in snapshots in the last 5 months of this year. Here are just a few examples:
The Wayback Machine's snapshots of news publishers' homepages have plummeted after a "breakdown" in archiving projects.
amaBhungane has fought off a "gag order" by a powerful South African businessman in court and its muckraking has led a president to resign.
Their tagline: “Digging dung, fertilizing democracy.” https://buff.ly/3WmQF7H
“This is supposed to be a site supporting writers, not market speculators, gamblers, false prophets and snake-oil sales persons.”
Polymarket, the cryptocurrency-based prediction betting platform, is launching a Substack integration. https://buff.ly/3zWGpve
The EU is threatening to fine Meta for saying Facebook is "free."
(What about the ~spiritual~ cost?)
1 million newsletter subscribers, 10 staffers — and no editors?
https://pressgazette.co.uk/newsletters/ai-newsletters-publishers-trending-now/
Slack introduces iPhone widgets to make your editors more inescapable
https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/22/24203924/slack-iphone-ipad-ios-ipados-widgets
Semafor launches Semafor Gulf to target the Middle East market
https://www.semafor.com/article/07/19/2024/semafor-launches-in-the-middle-east
Why The Guardian has expanded its paid content offering with a new recipe app, Feast
https://pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/nationals/the-guardian-feast-subscriber-retention-acquisition/
Why “Sorry, I don’t know” is sometimes the best answer: The Washington Post’s technology chief on its first AI chatbot https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/07/the-washington-posts-cto-on-first-ai-chatbot-climate-answers/
Browser cookies, as unkillable as cockroaches, won’t be leaving Google Chrome after all https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/07/browser-cookies-as-unkillable-as-cockroaches-wont-be-leaving-google-chrome-after-all/
Would you pay to be able to quit TikTok and Instagram? You’d be surprised how many would.
“The dignified presentation of the sponsor has too often been abandoned for hucksters’ tattle, interlarded into the middle of programs and tiresomely continued at the end,” Hoover complained, sounding like nothing so much as a listener trying to skip past the midroll ads in an otherwise free podcast. https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/07/in-1924-a-magazine-ran-a-contest-who-is-to-pay-for-broadcasting-and-how-a-century-later-were-still-asking-the-same-question/
The New York Times and the Washington Post compete with meme accounts for the chance to be first with a big headline. https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/07/breaking-the-ways-people-hear-about-big-news-these-days-into-a-million-pieces-says-source/
To find readers for longform investigations, the nonprofit newsroom Public Health Watch leans on partners and in-person work https://buff.ly/3zHyXnC
A new report found 95% of local independent newsrooms are producing newsletters — up from 81% just two years ago https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/07/nearly-all-local-online-newsrooms-produce-newsletters-a-lion-report-finds/
You’re more likely to believe fake news shared by someone you barely know than by your best friend https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/07/youre-more-likely-to-believe-fake-news-shared-by-someone-you-barely-know-than-by-your-best-friend/#identifier_0_229009
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